Pagan,

You made me chuckle seeing your last photo with the scion upside down. Keep trying to graft. If you do grafting in spring or early summer you will get better results.

Good luck!

I have to give it to you Pagan, when it comes to pushing the boundaries and limits of what this awesome plant can do you have humungous balls! I'm upset if I break a leaf of by accident :)

Tracy

The Grafting is quite a lot of fun, once you get your first ones started. Marie has been a source of great information, help and support.

Pagan, that is the nice thing about having a large number of seedlings. You can use them for our grafting experiments.

Hoping to do some in the summer of my favorite blooms.

Rick

Thanks, Ladylotus. I should probably do it right now before my plants start threatening to bloom.
Adeniums are just amazing, Tracy! I felt about them like you do now but my cats have kicked them around so much and they just kept going on so I figured they can handle experimentation.
I did exactly as Marie instructed, Rick. But making sure the pieces stay together takes a lot of skill! I haven't actually tried grafting my seedlings since I have not seen any of them bloom.

For my next experiment, I'll be planting seedlings in the ground this growing season. Then I'll yank them out in autumn. Hopefully, there are no grubs in the ground, we haven't checked. But judging by the irises, there probably isn't any.

Fingers crossed!

Pagan

Oh Pagan, u gave me the giggles seeing the upside down graft. That is something that I would do. I have yet to give grafting a try. Being my first year of growing, my seedlings have yet to flower and won't for a while. I'm probably nursing about 100+ pinks so will probably have plenty of bases to experiment with.

Hi Pagan I understand your frustration as I also have tried V grafting and flat grafting then I watched a video of Growing Green Thumbs where he uses glue to seal the union and I too have had my first success!!!

Glue! I will totally do that, Maria, if I ever get around to grafting this summer. I'll post an update on my upside-down frankendenium tomorrow, if it's still there. I've also decided to leave my 2-year old seedlings alone this summer, to see what they'll do when left alone. I have a feeling this will be a short growing season anyway, the temp here still drops below 10C at night. Sheesh. And we keep getting pea-soup fog! What is up with that.

Christine, a hundred plus??

Yep. She's still upside-down

Hi Pagan, good to see you again. Nobody told the plant that things were awry she is still growing!

Tracy

Hi Tracy! Yeah, this is our first spring in this house and I am very badly missing my old landlord who used to take care of everything. Suddenly we are having to learn things like starting up the sprinklers (I didn't know that was a thing), having someone go up the roof to clean the gutter thingie and what am I supposed to do with this pond! lol And there are so many plants coming up in the yard that I don't know what are, what to do with them or if I even like them. Arg.

I did find this early bloomer though, I'll just paste it here. It's my red one, albeit out of focus.

I'll use a camera next time!
Pagan

Pagan,. That all sounds wonderful with the yard and the learning experience you will gain. If you should have any question regarding plants in the yard, do not hesitate to send a photo through to me and I would love the opportunity to see if I could identify. If this helps?

Your grafting would look wonderful if the picture flipped as it has on some of mine.

Sorry I could not resist. Do not give up. It is a lot of fun and I thank Marie for all of her assistance and well documented photo's of the procedure that she has used.

Rick

The deck looks great! The cool thing about being in a new place is you probably found all kinds of new spaces for plants. Time to add to the collection. Just sayin.

We've been busy in the yard too cleaning up trees that have become overgrown.

Tracy

I've been looking forward to the update on that 'upside-down' graft!! Please continue posting updates on this plant.

Pagan....you are too funny.....I had a friend who also did up side down graft, it looked funny at first, but it turned around to follow the sun in few months.

The more you do it, the better you will get. Remember to leave room, if it doesn't take the first time, cut it down and try it again. It is fun and learning in the process.

Marie

Ah! The try and (semi) fail experiments. Only way to learn. Two of my 2 year old seedlings (are they still seedlings at that age?) that I grafted together didn't make it. And they were the two with about 10 branches each. I got depressed about it. I'm looking at some of my other 2 year olds and thinking of what I could do on them. Some are just now starting to put out bloom buds so will have to wait and see if the get left alone or are pink and will be used as grafting stock.

Kirk

Hey you guys, I think it's finally starting to realize it is upside-down!

It turns out there's an easy way to tell if your scion is upside-down: the marks on this branch were left by old leaves as they die and detach. Just make sure the piece is smiling when you stick it to the parent stock, i.e. those tips are pointing up.

Pagan

P.S. Kirk, after a year, I stop thinking of them as seedlings. Although I have a batch of seedlings right now that are bigger at 5 months than my 2-year olds! Go figure.

Hey there Pagan

I have been wondering how your graft turned out. Glad it is doing good and it will be very interesting to see how it does after a year or two.

Glad you shared an update.